The Great One

I've resisted any hockey analogies in this blog......until now.

I was thinking about how we recognize achievements in business - record sales, record profits, sometimes team recognition for a job well done. I may be stating the obvious, but in business, seldom are great accomplishments achieved alone.

I came across Wayne Gretzky's scoring records recently. For those of you who don't know hockey, Gretzky was the best ever to play the game. He retired many years ago and still holds 61 different scoring titles. His nickname was "The Great One". How cool is that?

Of interest to me, were the number of records he held for assists. He wasn't simply great because he scored goals (and he scored LOTS of goals). He was great because he made the rest of his team great as well. He made plays to allow his teammates to score. And needless to say, he played on a lot of winning teams.

We keep assist stats in hockey, baseball and basketball. On every hockey goal, credit is goven to the scorer and the one or two players that helped make it happen. In baseball, every out is recorded by position and the scoring identifies everyone who touched the ball in the process.

In business we tend not to keep track of "assists" - but who wouldn't want to work in a place where everyone was looking out for each other's success? - a place where co-workers were recognized for helping others? Shouldn't we find a way to recognize business "assists"?

"The Great One" scored 894 goals in his career. He also had 1962 assists. For every goal he scored, he helped two teammates score as well.

So the question is: "How could you recognize "assists" at your company?